John Slidell

John Slidell (1793-9 July 1871) was a member of the US House of Representatives (D-LA 1) from 4 March 1843 to 10 November 1845 (succeeding Edward Douglass White Sr. and preceding Emile La Sere) and a US Senator from 5 December 1853 to 4 February 1861 (succeeding Pierre Soule and preceding William P. Kellogg).

Biography
John Slidell was born in New York City, New York in 1793, and he worked as a merchant in New York before working as a lawyer in New Orleans from 1819 to 1843. Slidell served in the state legislature before serving in the US House of Representatives from 1843 to 1845, resigning in order to serve as ambassador to Mexico from 1845 to 1846 (during which time he failed to purchase California for $25 million). He went on to serve as a US Senator from 1853 to 1861, and he supported repealing the Missouri Compromise, acquiring Cuba, and admitting Kansas. Slidell was a pro-Union moderate until Abraham Lincoln's election pushed the southern states into seceding, and he resigned and returned home after Louisiana seceded. He was sent to represent the Confederacy in France, and he was one of two Confederate diplomats involved in the Trent Affair of November 1861. He moved to Paris after the American Civil War's end, and he died in Cowes, Isle of Wight, England in 1871.